Commentist Beer Barrel: Shoot to Thrill

Good afternoon, beer coin-a-suers. [DFO’s] resident drunk beer reviewer, Make It Snow, is an a lot of something else right now apparently, and as BFC pointed out last week, guest posts are a happenin’. I am your Low Commander of the Super Soldiers, and this week you are stuck with ME!

It has been a while since an IPA has found its way into the Barrel, so I decided to change that this week with a review of one of up and coming Beachwood BBQ & Brewing’s beers. Located right in the heart of downtown Long Beach, I have not yet made the pilgrimage North to peruse their boozey wares, but that will likely be changing soon. I have been rather impressed with their bottle selections so far, all of which I have had being IPAs, so I figured why break that trend now? It also gives me an excuse to use one of my fancy IPA glasses that I got for Xmas last year.

Ribbed, for your buttchugging pleasure

Thrillseeker is a double dry-hopped IPA that sits at 7.1% ABV and over 100 IBUs. The initial dry-hop contains Chinook, Summit, Centennial, and Simcoe, and the second doubles down on the Simcoe and Chinook. That’s a lotta hops! My bottle had a date code of 5/23/17, and it’s hard to get much fresher than that. It pours a fairly light orange and the head maintains a good half inch of foam after coming down a little. The smell is powerfully hoppy with a kick of citrus, which is about exactly what I was expecting with this beer. My initial sip started very clean; you get all the taste of the sweet malts and tropical citrus up front, before quickly giving way to a mild bitter earthiness on the back of the tongue. And let me tell you, that bitter bite isn’t going anywhere for a while. Each sip afterwards builds upon it, and even if you take a break for a minute or two, you’re going to have that lingering in the back of your mouth.

I let this beer warm up a bit to see how it would change, and my did it. After a good 30-45 minutes, this thing became the definition of a hop bomb. That lingering backend bitterness changed to a kick in the teeth that encompassed my entire mouth, and I couldn’t taste any other damn thing. If that’s what you’re going for, have at it, but this quickly went back in my fridge for a bit to round out those sharp edges.

Overall, it’s a pretty tasty IPA with a not overpowering bitter bite, but I didn’t find it particularly special among a lot of the other offerings available today. If I happened to find it on tap anywhere, it certainly would be a go-to, but I wouldn’t necessarily be tracking this down. That being said, it is a solid addition to the quality line up of Beachwood’s growing selections and if you happen to find something by them, I sincerely doubt that you would be disappointed.

Low Commander of the Super Soldiers is a somewhat of beer and drank a can of Stone Ripper in the shower before this 22 oz of Beachwood Thrillseeker. He enjoys talking in the third-person a little bit too much, and drank the majority of this Thrillseeker while finally completing Mass Effect: Andromeda. He recommends the beer, not the game.

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Low Commander of the Super Soldiers is a native North County San Diegan with an affinity for the Padres, beer, whiskey, punk rock, video games and the end of days. If you eat a fish taco with a fork in his presence, you may lose your hand.

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Scrolled down to earlier comments about teh heat. I live in what I thought was the hottest, most humid place on the planet, until I spent a week in New Orleans in July. Our hotel room was air conditioned, but there was also a dehumidifier in the room. I had to empty that bitch out twice during the night, I never new it was possible to take a bite of air.

It’s convenient because as a Michigander, I’ll already be here when here becomes the last habitable place in the country.

1

June 4, 2017 8:34 pm

Member

Unsurprised

Shit. The Gulf encroaches from the south, Atlantic from the east, and Hudson Bay from the north. Who’d have ever guessed that the last vestige of civilization in North America would be in the upper peninsula?

Stories like these are why I prefer the cold to the heat. Cold? Put on another sweater, light a fire, drink some hot cocoa, whatever. You’ve got options. Hot? And your A/C breaks? You’re completely and utterly fucked.

Yep, I actually have an emergency window unit I keep in my closet. I’ve had to break it out a few times when the central A/C went AWOL.
No fucking way would I live here without phase-change refrigeration.
(Just went all physics on dat ass!)

1

June 4, 2017 8:30 pm

Member

Unsurprised

From the mountain desert. I’m used to a dry heat, but heat is still motherfucking heat, and if it weren’t for the rain Portland would be perfect.

Eugh. ESPN does their damnedest to make Sunday Night Baseball unwatchable.

0

June 4, 2017 7:27 pm

Member

JustStopDude

Its a toss up to which I hate more…the Orioles on Sunday Night Baseball or the Ravens on MNF. I think its more painful when the O’s are on ESPN just because the Orioles’ announcing crews are fucking top notch.

I love it when I am home and people bitch about the O’s announcing. Mother fuckers…I challenge anyone to sit through a White Sox broadcast.

Speaking of hitting the sauce hard, that’s why Hawk is only doing road games for the White Sox instead of home games. He actually lives in Indiana not far from South Bend, so it’s an quick drive for him to go there and fly to wherever the Sox are playing. Turns out he was making the drive to Bridgeport back to Indiana shitfaced fairly often.

Least surprising news ever. I remember going to Wrigley in the late 80’s and watching Harry build a castle out of his empty Bud cans. When I lived in Rock Island, Harry was working for the South Siders with Jimmy Piersol (RIP Jimmy you crazy bastard) and those 2 would be flat out shit hammered by the end of the game.
Fun times.

4

June 4, 2017 7:46 pm

Member

JustStopDude

I’m working this job with a really old field engineer from the Netherlands.

The stories these old guys have about getting utterly shitfaced and then going into a drive room to commission medium voltage gear…its fucking insane.

Even in the home office, the old chick my desk is next to…the one who was one of the original “GE Girls”…she has stories about how every single meeting room had a stocked bar and that everyone usually had at least a bottle in their desk.

I always though J.D. had self awareness that his jokes were terrible and I could tolerate them. I actually thought it was Len people disliked because he doesn’t waste time on the usual bullshit narratives most broadcast teams lean on.

My deep research into the Canadian way of life in Ontario is continuing. Its absolutely stunning here on the lake during the summer. The sprawl however is just brutal. I mean there is traffic here on this Queen Elizabeth highway all the freaking time. I cannot imagine trying to get around here in the winter time.

Hamilton is what I imagine what Baltimore was like during the 50’s. What I mean is that even though there is a massive amount of heavy industry here, its not all abandoned. People have jobs so no one is stuck getting into the drug game to make ends meet. Its kind of depressing when I think about home and “what if”.

Hamilton is… a strange place. The rest of Ontario rips on it a lot as being the little brother to cities like Toronto and Ottawa, but the reality is that it’s honestly not nearly as economically depressed as places like Windsor, Sault Ste. Marie and Sarnia, which have all had the shit kicked out of them thanks to auto industry and steel mills closing up shop.

Still, I’m never gonna live there. No sir.

And yes, fuck the QEW with a rusty pitchfork.

2

June 4, 2017 7:30 pm

Member

JustStopDude

It reminds me a LOT of Nagasaki. What I mean is that there is insane amounts of heavy industry in Nagasaki…and you can walk around. Like the same area in the US would be a no go area for safety.

Gary Indiana has basically the same facilities and production as Hamilton and its a fucking depressing death trap.

Gary, Indiana is not among my list of places I’m hoping to visit anytime soon.

Hamilton has seen a resurgence of industry in recent years. Probably about 20 years ago a lot of folks were worried that it might slide into a Baltimore-ish decline, but with some steel corps amalgamating recently it seems to have staved that off for now. I’m glad that’s the case. I don’t know about the future of Canadian heavy industry at all, but I’ll take a Hamilton doing alright for the time being for sure.

There’s actually a pretty good brewery in Gary I can take the train to, so I might file a field report sometime soon.

2

June 4, 2017 7:42 pm

Member

JustStopDude

The site I am at is doing it pretty good, at least by my impressions walking around the site for a few hours yesterday. I mean you can tell if the local workforce gives a shit just by walking into the drive room. Plus, they are investing a lot of money just in this training. Most places now a days refuse to pay for the training or if they do, they just never schedule time for it. Its going to be a bit nerve wracking for me because its basically three weeks in a row and the few people there I have already met…REALLY know their shit.

I’ve rented cars from them for so much for work that I could rent one for free for months on end. That said, its like every five or so business trips, they will utterly and completely fuck something up and I promise “NEVER AGAIN!”

Then I use one of their competitors and its even worse and I just come back gritting my teeth.

It’s in the high-80’s right now and I fucking hate it. The worst part of summer is it being this hot and people saying they like it. You’re lying. You never set the temperature this high when you get the chance because it’s too fucking hot.

You’ve nailed what I consider to be the main difference between an okay beer and a really good one…the finish.
A beer can taste pretty decent up front, but if whatever lingers is unpleasant then I’ll pass. Like you I don’t mind a little bit of a hoppy bitterness, but not to the point where you need a drink of water to kill the taste.
I’ve been told almost the same thing by numerous women in my life, but concerning an ENTIRELY different activity.

If you can find a Stone Enjoy By Double IPA, consider trying it. It is a very hoppy beer, but barely has any bitterness to it at all. It might be all you need to get your hoppi-senses going. It also happens to be my favorite overall IPA.

My friend who home brews, just went on an extensive rant against overly hopped IPAs, in particular cascade hops, which many of the breweries use as they are the cheapest. Of course some of them are ones I like, but I absolutely see where he is coming from. And like me, he is always right, just ask him.

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